Flooding and the ESB....

probe

PYRO#1 wrote: »

But the problem is its not only the ESBs fault. TBH your just ESB bashing. The goverment, councils and planners all approved the construction of the dams.
The ESB are in a hard spot and you need to appreciate this. And they need to investigate this incident.

I’m not “ESB bashing” – I’ve had the greatest respect for the ESB in the past. This has been shattered to some extent over the past decade by a number of issues, the latest of which is the flooding.

To assist with any ESB investigation of the incident, I would make the following comments:

Anyone familiar with the River Lee in Cork city, especially the area around the North Mall and the footbridge that crosses the river to Grenville Place*, will know from observing the river flow velocity and height as it passes under the footbridge, when the ESB is at “full throttle” dumping after heavy rainfall along the Lee Valley. The water is deep and fast flowing under the bridge, even when the tide is out. In the past they have been able to manage this full throttle dumping without causing any flooding or walls to collapse, or any other collateral damage.

In one of your postings yesterday evening, you suggested that the capacity to store an additional 11.5 million tonnes of water didn’t exist immediately prior to Thursday’s flooding. I’ve been consistently saying that the ESB must lower reservoir and lake levels on an ongoing basis to make this capacity available.

But let’s look at a scenario if ESB took prompt action based on Met Eireann’s weather forecast for the week in question, which was delivered to the ESB for the Lee Valley by met.ie...

There is a river height gauge at the Lee Maltings, near Grenville Place which provides a good record of how much use the ESB made of the river’s capacity to empty the reservoir in preparation for the heavy rains. If you roll back the clock by changing the dates on the web interface at http://89.124.67.3/dotnetnuke/DEPLOYStations/LeeMaltings/tabid/85/Default.aspx to examine the river levels between 12.11.2009 at 0h00 and 21.11.2009 at 23h59 (change the dates and click on “update”), you will observe that the ESB appears to have made no attempt to dump water from the reservoir (ie apparently paying no heed to Met Eireann’s forecast of heavy rains) at any point until late on the evening of 19.11.09 (Thursday evening), (when disabled people sleeping in ground floor accommodation were been removed by neighbours and carers from their rapidly flooding bedrooms).

On every day leading up to the flood, the river level at the Maltings was permitted to fall to a depth of around 2 meters at low tides (wasting time by not using valuable water dumping capacity in the river) – which tells me that ESB was not preparing for the rain storm. A rain storm which Met Eireann says they told ESB about four days in advance – ie presumably from Monday 16.11.2009. Over 4 days prior to the forecast high rainfall on the Thursday the ESB could have lowered the reservoir in a planned manner by dumping over 50 million tonnes of water outside high tide periods without flood risk. This would have allowed the reservoir system to absorb the rainfall in the Cork area on Monday to Wednesday (which averaged about 10 mm per day) and still have well in excess of 12 million tonnes of empty reservoir capacity ready for Thursday’s downpour emergency.

In my view, the ESB was negligent. I’m not “ESB bashing” in saying this. Just my view based on an analysis of the publicly available facts, which are based on the numbers available to me

I have not done any legal research on statutory limitations to the ESB’s liability to third parties for flood damage caused by their action or inaction in the management of reservoirs and dams. Article 43 of the Constitution gives the people an express right to the ownership of private property. Flooding a person’s property through negligence is a blatant form of trespass [(trespass = a wrongful interference with the possession of property (personal property as well as real estate)]. If the ESB’s culture is to operate based on statutory protection, one would suggest that they are on shaky legal ground, and the ESB Board should take recent floods as an indication that they need to get their flood risk management system "house in order" as a matter of urgency.

Two steps that could be taken quickly - 1) automating the shut down of reservoir sluce gates based on downstream river levels at sensitive points exceeding predetermined thresholds and 2) the implementation of a general lowering of reservoir and lake levels - as proposed in this and other threads on several occasions.

*map: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=cork+grenville+place&sll=53.41291,-8.24389&sspn=5.095588,16.907959&g=ie&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Grenville+Pl,+Cork,+County+Cork,+Ireland&ll=51.898803,-8.485844&spn=0.005151,0.016512&t=h&z=17

annoymos

Listen if you all want to talk about the esb then know this . . the waterways could have been saved if the esb had've bothered to release the water from the dam back in October but they didn't. Now I'm here in the Waterways in Sallins looking out at over 150 people take out soaked teddy bears, furniture, cars etc and dump them into the waste. The ground itself is covered with rubbish and things that floated out of people's houses. Civil Defence kept phoning for more sandbags from the army and they took hours to arrive. . . I know because I was here on Sun as well when people had to take only what they could in a backpack and hop into the boat while everything else got destroyed.

probe

annoymos wrote: »

Listen if you all want to talk about the esb then know this . . the waterways could have been saved if the esb had've bothered to release the water from the dam back in October but they didn't. Now I'm here in the Waterways in Sallins looking out at over 150 people take out soaked teddy bears, furniture, cars etc and dump them into the waste. The ground itself is covered with rubbish and things that floated out of people's houses. Civil Defence kept phoning for more sandbags from the army and they took hours to arrive. . . I know because I was here on Sun as well when people had to take only what they could in a backpack and hop into the boat while everything else got destroyed.

One can only sympathise with the plight of yourself and your neighbours in Sallins. Perhaps the ESB would at a very minimum like to provide assistance with dumping all the damaged toys, furniture and other personal possessions of the 150 odd victims of the flooding? Aside from the cost of the items themselves, dumping is very expensive in Ireland.

I’m not suggesting that you take a truck load of the stuff up to their head office in Lr Fitzwilliam Street and depositing the material on their doorsteps (at least without legal advice). But it might be worth a phone call to the Chief Executive’s office asking for their assistance in the matter of recycling this stuff!

annoymos

probe wrote: »

One can only sympathise with the plight of yourself and your neighbours in Sallins. Perhaps the ESB would at a very minimum like to provide assistance with dumping all the damaged toys, furniture and other personal possessions of the 150 odd victims of the flooding? Aside from the cost of the items themselves, dumping is very expensive in Ireland.

I’m not suggesting that you take a truck load of the stuff up to their head office in Lr Fitzwilliam Street and depositing the material on their doorsteps (at least without legal advice). But it might be worth a phone call to the Chief Executive’s office asking for their assistance in the matter of recycling this stuff!

And what about the re-tiling, re-plastering, clothes, shoes, furniture, tv, hi-fi, stereo, everything that needs to be washed and scrubbed, the taking time off work to do this. The ESB only arrived today to reconnect the electricity. It will take months for these people's houses to be redone and the cost will be overwelming. Most of the people living here are young people whose wages have just been slashed thanks to the budget and they have very young children to mind. I know of several families who lived in their cars while their houses dried out.

I really believe that recycling is the least of these people's worries! Would you really give a damn if everything you owned was destroyed or would you be more concerned with being able to move home?

probe

annoymos wrote: »

And what about the re-tiling, re-plastering, clothes, shoes, furniture, tv, hi-fi, stereo, everything that needs to be washed and scrubbed, the taking time off work to do this. The ESB only arrived today to reconnect the electricity. It will take months for these people's houses to be redone and the cost will be overwelming. Most of the people living here are young people whose wages have just been slashed thanks to the budget and they have very young children to mind. I know of several families who lived in their cars while their houses dried out.

I really believe that recycling is the least of these people's worries! Would you really give a damn if everything you owned was destroyed or would you be more concerned with being able to move home?

1. Do you and your fellow victims not have insurance? If so the insurance should cover the cost of a home while this place is being repaired, cleaned up, re-wired, sanitized, re-decorated, and made ready for human habitation.

2. Contact the ESB CEO and see what you can get out of them? While I believe you may well have a valid case against them, I suspect it would be an expensive legal slog, risking large amounts in legal costs, to extract money from them through the legal route. But it is worth a try to make contact with him, and it would be a nice gesture of goodwill on their part if they went some distance in accommodating your needs in a creative way.

3. My main motivation for this thread is two-fold.

(a) Trying to make the ESB wake up to their responsibilities to prevent river overflow flooding by using modern technologies and getting their staff to work proactively with systems designed to take advantage of the latest technologies to shut off water automatically before any damage is done. Taking action as early as possible on warnings from Met Eireann - and generally putting their hydro plant into semi retirement allowing the reservoirs and rivers to be managed to minimise flood risk rather than to generate electricity. If river overflow flooding is substantially reduced, insurance premiums should reduce and fewer people end up living in un insurable properties.

(b) to separate the issue of bad planning on flood planes from bad river reservoir and lake level management by ESB. Many of the spammers to this and other threads have cited the bad planning/flood excuse.

A river problem that ESB can fix is on the Lee, Liffey or Shannon, where the river (or lake or reservoir) overflows its banks in circumstances where the ESB could or could have with prudent and diligent management of water levels, prevented the overflow. An excellent example is the Liffey where they have six months water storage in the reservoir system and no excuse for not turning down the river flow in the event of a downpour before any damage is done.

A bad planning flood issue is where buildings have been constructed on a swampy type of area, which gets flooded without the assistance of an ESB controlled river / lake system.

I mentioned recycling because this is a Green Issues topic, and it is better to recycle than dump - though one suspects this is the last issue on your mind at the moment.

Go the insurance route, and call Padraig McManus. Tel 01 676 5831.

Macha

probe wrote: »

(b) to separate the issue of bad planning on flood planes from bad river reservoir and lake level management by ESB. Many of the spammers to this and other threads have cited the bad planning/flood excuse.

probe, please keep the personal comments out of what is an interesting discussion.

Thank you

probe

Urban flood skimboarding, Western Road, Cork: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w57cbAqYwo8

Flood mashup: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1j8bUAOovCw

Video of flood at Kingsley Hotel, Cork http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AP-lwnIdS9U

Sometimes a SUV is indispensible: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdCW2ehYmIs (notice that the traffic lights are still functioning)

"Boating" tour along the N22 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpsZL_CJvzw&NR=1

Hanoverstraße: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h31sGYIKJX0&NR=1

Click bottom right icon to view in full screen HD: http://www.vimeo.com/7729712

Pleasant music, unpleasant reality... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQUTdR2NYbs

Ditto... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEWqbWGS4tw&NR=1

Video compilation of google images: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhUz7N6QgxY

Remarkable speed of river flow: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKzg8wSbPXI&NR=1

With thanks to a certain company, who one suspects wishes to remain anonymous, without whose assistance the production of these videos would not have been possible.

probe

I have put together a down-loadable “checklist” of river flood prevention measures. The primary focus is mainly on low or no cost measures.

The annual cost of flooding in Ireland can run to one or several hundred million Euros, the need for immediate action is a “no brainer”..

Format: .pdf file

http://chilp.it/?2b3535

probe

probe wrote: »

I have put together a down-loadable “checklist” of river flood prevention measures. The primary focus is mainly on low or no cost measures.

The annual cost of flooding in Ireland can run to one or several hundred million Euros, the need for immediate action is a “no brainer”..

Format: .pdf file

http://chilp.it/?2b3535

Some people are finding the file download from crappy Amazon Web Services S3 to be slowwwww.

I've uploaded the file to google web services as an alternative:

https://sites.google.com/site/probeinfosite/docs/rivermanagementchecklist.pdf?attredirects=0&d=1

The file size is 4.3 MB.

probe

The RTE R1 News at One interview with ESB CEO Padraig McManus on 8.12.09, about “who said what to whom and when” in their exchanges with Cork City Council on 19.11.2009, misses the key point.... Calling up and saying “we are going to flood you out over the next few hours” is almost useless information – no matter how specific or otherwise the details provided on cubic metres/sec of water deluge etc.

If the ESB had taken on board and diligently acted on Met Éireann’s weather warning issued four days before the flood, ESB could have dump discharged virtually the entire reservoir in a controlled manner, without flood risk, to make space for the expected rainfall. If they had done that, there would have been no flood. ESB was asleep at the wheel. Cork City Council should consider legal action against ESB to recover their costs and damages...

You can’t move the city out of the way – but you can move the water!

May I suggest that you read the fuller story, Mr McManus?:

https://sites.google.com/site/probeinfosite/docs/rivermanagementchecklist.pdf?attredirects=0&d=1

It may help to ensure that something like this never happens again, on your watch....

News at One interview with McManus: http://www.rte.ie/news/news1pm/player.html?20091208,2664330,2664330,real,209

moceri

I listened to Mc Manus vigorously defend his position. So when are you going to publish the protocols in place (you alluded to) to deal with water release during flood conditions?

How did you calculate the 800 m3/s inflow to the Inniscarra Dam?

What was the Discharge rate at this time from the Carrigadrohid Dam into the Inniscarra Dam which compounded the difficulty?

Why was there a huge surge in the River level at aprox 2.30 am (20.11.2009) which was then throttled back?

Why did no one from Inniscarra Dam act proactively when the Sailing Boats (in their berths) and Storage Containers for equipment located at Inniscarra Sailing Marina started floating in the dam,the day previous indicating an unusually high water level. If high rainfall was indicated for the next few days no one from the ESB considered the likely scenario when there was sufficient time to ameliorate the situation.

UCC and the Tyndall Institute were recording lowered Ph levels indicating high run-off activity from the (acidic)Bog Areas around Macroom. Why was this not flagged as a concern that Water Tables were unusually high?

In terms of Discharge management, who was making the Call that night? Were Junior , inexperienced staff left in charge who over reacted to the flood conditions?

How many Rain Guages does the ESB have in the Lee catchment area, and when will you publish the data?

probe

Another example of reasons for flooding: The River Tolka is expected to flow through two "sewer pipes" under a bridge along the R157 near Dunboyne - one can clearly see the pipes from this aerial photograph:

http://www.bing.com/maps/?v=2&cp=sx47fygfts2n&scene=29501380&lvl=2&sty=o

Look at the "valley" that has been cut by that river over the centuries, there is no way that these two sewer pipes could possibly be expected to carry the flow of water when the river is in flood. A few hundred metres downstream, the same river runs via a culvert under the N3 - with no doubt a similarly constrained flow capacity, threatening a national arterial road.

Crap engineering standards, 21st century Irish style, that make no provision for heavy rainfall and rivers in flood. Result - houses and land in the Dunboyne area subject to flooding - needlessly - if a proper, professional job was done day one with the bridges and river maintenance, there wouldn't be a problem.

Is it too much to expect a holistic green approach to planning that takes the forces of nature into account from 2010 onwards?

probe

The Serbian met service provides hydrological data for the country's rivers on a website. For each river: river name, name of measurement station, water height, change in water height over 24h, flow rate (tonnes/sec), water temperature, and for many rivers if you click on the H20 symbol, you can see a chemical analysis of the river's water.

Dunav = River Danube. At Smederevo station, the flow rate is around 4,800 tonnes a second (Cork was flooded when the ESB discharged around 500 tonnes a second). They have been diligently measuring river height data since the middle of the 18th century, on a manual basis with a guy checking a "ruler" alongside the river and recording readings. One assumes that most of the flow measurement is automated by now. Click on the station name and one can see detailed graphs for the river - showing a red maximum level line - one can see how much below the safe maximum height the river is currently flowing.

Everything one needs to keep an eye on the countries rivers on one screen....

National river status overview: http://www.hidmet.gov.rs/eng/osmotreni/stanje_voda.php

Changes in river water height over past 7 days at a monitoring station:

http://www.hidmet.gov.rs/eng/osmotreni/nrt_tabela_grafik.php?hm_id=42060&period=7

Annual data: http://www.hidmet.gov.rs/eng/hidrologija/godisnje/godisnjak.php?sifra=42055

Flood alert stages for monitoring station: http://www.hidmet.gov.rs/eng/hidrologija/izvestajne/bezprognoza.php?hm_id=42040

Water quality monitoring station:

http://www.hidmet.gov.rs/eng/osmotreni/kvalitet_voda.php

hugoline

probe wrote: »

Another example of reasons for flooding: The River Tolka is expected to flow through two "sewer pipes" under a bridge along the R157 near Dunboyne - one can clearly see the pipes from this aerial photograph:

http://www.bing.com/maps/?v=2&cp=sx47fygfts2n&scene=29501380&lvl=2&sty=o

Look at the "valley" that has been cut by that river over the centuries, there is no way that these two sewer pipes could possibly be expected to carry the flow of water when the river is in flood. A few hundred metres downstream, the same river runs via a culvert under the N3 - with no doubt a similarly constrained flow capacity, threatening a national arterial road.

Crap engineering standards, 21st century Irish style, that make no provision for heavy rainfall and rivers in flood. Result - houses and land in the Dunboyne area subject to flooding - needlessly - if a proper, professional job was done day one with the bridges and river maintenance, there wouldn't be a problem.

Is it too much to expect a holistic green approach to planning that takes the forces of nature into account from 2010 onwards?

Not sure if you linked to the right location, but the tolka is just a tiny stream a few meters to the west of that bridge (towards the bottom of the pic)

(view from east to west):



Anyway... going waaaay of topic here. Probe, why don't you start a new thread about planing for future flood prevention, proper implementation / change of planing laws and the possible impact on ireland.
This hasn't too much to do with the ESB anymore

probe

hugoline wrote: »

Not sure if you linked to the right location, but the tolka is just a tiny stream a few meters to the west of that bridge (towards the bottom of the pic)

(view from east to west):

It looks like the same location - but the images were taken at different times (if you look at the cars parked next to the truck - they are in different positions except for the red vehicle). The profile of the bridge (in terms of the absence of the sewer pipes) in your pic is completely different for some reason to the bing image in my link. In any event, the bridge in your pic remains a constraining factor in river flow (relative to the river basin capacity), and the water is going to flood the surrounding land if a surge exceeds the bridge's underflow capacity.

While this has nothing to do with the ESB, I thought I'd put it here in the context of the overall thread - if nothing else but to show that probe didn't start the thread to "bash the ESB"!

probe

The HIRLAM and COSMO weather forecasting models are indicating substantial rainfall in the river Lee catchment area over the next 48 hours. Any evidence of the ESB lowering the reservoir levels at Inniscarra to make space for the potential deluge?

probe

The last 48 hours saw a higher rainfall in Cork* (65.4 mm) compared with the November flood dates of 18 and 19 November (63.7 mm).

No reports of flooding this time.....

Because the reservoir water levels were reduced - as they should have been in November...

http://eurobucket00001.s3.amazonaws.com/inniscarra11.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJASE4MIARAIUVSMQ&Expires=1264953269&Signature=I0CIAKgHW0KkguO%2fddsCfV%2fmDCk%3d

This Norwegian website, operated by met.no provides detailed short and long term weather forecasts for about 30 locations in Ireland (as well as many other parts of the world). The forecasts are very well presented graphically, using solid data - unlike many of the backstreet weather websites one finds in various parts of the internet.

http://www.yr.no/place/Ireland/Cork/Cork/hour_by_hour.html

*data for Cork Airport

gbn

Same problem as on the Lee a week earlier, and in the River Shannon catchment area.

the shannon system bears no relation whatsoever to the cork system, floodin in the shannon is upstream of the system and is a funtion of slow flat river sections see my comphrensive response to Probes nonsense.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=63866812#post63866812

Jim Martin

http://www.clare.fm/news/esb-defends-water-release-during-clare-november-floods

probe

Jim Martin wrote: »

http://www.clare.fm/news/esb-defends-water-release-during-clare-november-floods

"The ESB has refuted claims it could have done more to avoid flooding in South East Clare last November."

The company has been spewing out the same rubbish since the events in November. The company / water authorities are negligent in not having spare capacity in the system to deal with heavy rain. Last November's rain was forecast in advance and was not particularly heavy in the long-term scheme of things.

These people screwed up and they should be made pay for the damage caused to the property owners and occupants. And not be allowed pass it on to customers.